9. Sawyer
Sawyer
“Do you remember that time we had a sleepover?” I start to respond, start to tell him there were dozens of sleepovers, hundreds maybe, but he continues. “I was like nine or ten and there was that crazy storm.”
I close my eyes and picture it—the playroom in their house, toys scattered everywhere, rain pelting against the windows, steaming mugs of hot cocoa and warm oatmeal cookies.
“The one where we lost power?”
He rubs circles on my arm. “That’s the one.”
“I remember,” I say.
“We had that one nanny back then, Julia. She always baked cookies…” He trails off like he’s remembering how delicious they tasted.
“She set us up in the playroom with snacks and you grabbed every blanket you could find and begged me to build a fort. I could never say no to you, even then. Not with your dumb little puppy eyes begging and that crooked bucktoothed grin. We built a fort and the three of us climbed in with flashlights, and pillows, and every time the thunder shook the walls or the rain hammered the windows, you’d reach for me.
And Owen…” His voice cracks. “He was so damn afraid of the storm too. But you’d never know that.
He had to keep up a brave face…for you.”
Tears track down my face, dropping down to the earth below. I know Knox is crying beside me and it makes them fall that much harder.
“He told the dumbest ghost stories that night, but he made you laugh. He made you forget that you were afraid. He comforted you the way you needed.”
Owen.
His name consumes my mind. It plays again and again like a beating drum. Like somehow I can summon him back here with me. Beside me. Safe and warm and happy.
Owen. Owen. Owen.
He can’t be gone. This isn’t real. Please, God…please.
Knox sucks in whatever mucus and blood and tears that clog his nose and mouth, wiping the rest with the back of his arm.
“You fell asleep first,” he continues, sobering, like telling this story is the only thing keeping him from completely falling apart. “Curled up between us with your head on one of those lumpy stuffed animals you used to drag everywhere. That pink rabbit.”
“Miss Flops,” I whisper.
“Miss Flops.” Through his hollow tone, there’s a hint of amusement…
an empty smile at the memory. “The storm kept going for hours, that lightening was so fucking bright it lit up the room. And Owen—” He stops again, collecting himself.
“I’m pretty sure he stayed awake for the entire night.
I woke up once and saw him just...watching you sleep.
He had to make sure you were okay. That we were all okay. ”
My chest is caving in. Each breath feels like it’s tearing something open that will never close.
“I remember giving him shit, saying something like, ‘get to sleep already,’ and he just shook his head. He wanted to be there in case you woke up and needed him.”
I can’t speak. I can’t do anything but cry and hold Knox’s hand and try to keep breathing even though it feels like a betrayal because Owen isn’t breathing anymore and he should be. He should be right here.
The helicopter is closer, its blades sending a draft of wind in our direction that makes the car shudder. Help must be coming. Please, I beg, not knowing if I’m speaking the words out loud. Please. Please. Please. Let us hold on.
“That’s Owen,” he says through tears, seemingly oblivious to what’s happening around us. “Always so fucking perfect.”
“Hey! Can you hear me?” The voice cuts through the helicopter noise and the wind and everything else.
I force my eyes open. When did I close them? There’s a woman in a safety harness, suspended from a crane arm that’s extended out toward us. She’s maybe twenty feet away, close enough that I can see the determination on her face and make out the equipment strapped across her chest and waist.
“I’m with the fire department,” she calls out in a strong, clear voice. “I’m going to get you out of there, but I need you to listen very carefully to everything I say. Can you do that?”
Knox’s hand tightens around mine. “Yes,” he answers for both of us, because I still can’t seem to make words come out right.
“Good.” She’s studying us and the surroundings, most likely taking mental notes on our positions, our injuries, how lucid we are. “First, I need you to tell me if either of you are seriously hurt. Any bleeding you can see, any broken bones, anything that needs immediate attention.”
“I don’t know,” I manage. “Everything hurts but I don’t—I can’t tell…”
“That’s okay. That’s normal. The adrenaline masks a lot.” She sounds like she’s done this a million times before. So calm. It almost makes me believe we’ll be okay. “What about you?” She’s looking at Knox now.
“Maybe cracked ribs,” he says. “I hit my head, it’s cut somewhere. But I’m—we’re still here. We’re okay.” He pauses, and I feel him tense. “There were people behind us. Row four. Are they—”
Without their screaming, I almost forgot about the couple directly behind us. Oh God- Did they?
“We’re working on everyone,” she says, which isn’t really an answer but maybe it’s the only one she can give.
“Right now I need you both to stay absolutely still. The structure you’re on isn’t stable.
We’re in the process of securing it, but any sudden movement could cause further collapse. Do you understand?”
Further collapse.
We could still fall. After everything, after surviving when Owen didn’t, we could still fall. And with people right here to save us.
“How long?” Knox asks.
She glances down and speaks into her radio—words I can’t make out over the helicopter circling above. She looks back at us, and there’s nothing in her expression that tells me exactly how screwed we are. She’s calm and collected.
“We need approximately ten more minutes to fully stabilize the track section you’re on. Then we’ll begin extraction. I know that seems like a long time, but I need you to trust the process. Can you hold on for ten more minutes?”
Ten minutes.
How long have we been up here already? Five minutes? Twenty? An hour? Time has completely lost meaning. It feels like we’ve been suspended here forever, but also like Owen was just screaming my name seconds ago.
Owen.
A sob tries to claw its way out of my throat but I force it down.
“We can hold on,” Knox says.
The woman nods, and gives us a tight smile. “I’m going to stay right here where you can see me. You’re not alone, okay? If anything changes, if you feel any shifting or hear anything that concerns you, you call out to me immediately. My name is Ellen. Okay?”
“Okay,” we say together.
Ellen stays close but starts speaking to someone on her radio, turning her face away from us. I know we’re not alone…but it feels like we are again.
“Knox,” I whisper.
“I’m here. I’m right here.”
“I’m so scared.”
His thumb moves against my palm, that same small circle he’s been tracing this whole time. “Me too, Thorne. Me too.”
They’re working below us. So many people shouting instructions, clearing the way for equipment, emergency response crews moving in. There’s tarps, big blue ones, covering the wreckage. Covering—
“Keep talking to me,” I beg him. I can’t have silence because then I’ll think, and if I think I’ll remember the sound of him screaming. The moment it stopped. The excruciating crash that followed. “Please. I can’t…If I stop and think about it I’ll—”
“Okay.” Knox’s voice shakes but he pushes through. “Okay. What do you want me to talk about?”
“Anything.” I’m crying again, or maybe I never stopped. “Everything. Just…don’t stop talking. Please don’t stop.”
So he doesn’t.
I brace myself to hear more stories about Owen. More trips down memory lane, that’ll leave me shattered into a hundred pieces. But instead he starts rattling off random facts.
“Did you know that honey never goes bad? They found pots of it in some ancient Egyptian tombs that were still edible after thousands of years.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just squeeze his hand, afraid to make any sudden moves.
“And octopuses have three hearts. It’s pretty cool, actually. Two pump blood to the gills, one pumps it to the rest of the body. The heart that sends blood to the body stops beating when the octopus swims. That’s why they’d rather crawl. Swimming exhausts them.”
His neck must be as tired as mine from holding his head upright this long. It falls forward, chin against the restraint. I let mine do the same, and that dizzy feeling comes back, as all my blood rushes into it.
He continues but his voice cracks again. I know he’s talking for me, through the pain, through the exhaustion, and I can’t do anything but squeeze his hand. “And sharks have been around longer than trees. By like, millions of years.”
The facts keep coming, one after another, meaningless trivia that has nothing to do with anything but I understand why he’s doing this. Facts are safe. They’re about things that happened millions of years ago or in the depths of the ocean or on other planets—anywhere but here, anywhere but now.
“The Eiffel Tower can be fifteen centimeters taller during the summer,” he continues, and I can hear him starting to run out of steam. “Because of thermal expansion. The metal heats up and expands.”
But he keeps holding it together, reciting trivia with our hands intertwined. It’s this strange limbo, but it’s working. Time passes, and I focus on breathing, and we both pretend we’re not falling apart while we know Owen’s mangled body is under those tarps.
The ten minutes feel like hours and seconds all at once.
Ellen stays visible below us, occasionally looking up to check on us, speaking calmly into her radio.
The crane adjusts position. More emergency vehicles arrive, painting the darkening sky in red and blue.
And finally, finally, Ellen calls up to us. “Okay, get ready, you two.”
This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, so why is my heart racing?
“It’s going to be okay,” Knox says, somehow feeling my tension.